Some shots from the UT Gardens today. Doesn’t look like there will be much more in the way of pictures after this week – though soon the leaves will be changing, which means pictures of a different sort…
Fall in the Gardens
Boone, NC
We were in Boone, NC this weekend for a good friend’s wedding, and our hotel happened to have an incredible selection of flowers on the grounds. Perfect time to play with the Olympus and see how it handles with the 60mm macro.
Olympus 60mm Macro
Spent some time Wednesday with the new 60mm Olympus macro. Working distance isn’t great, but all in all seems like a nice lens… now if only there were more pretty things to take pictures of…
Atlanta Botanical Gardens
Spent some time in Atlanta this weekend and went to the Botanical Gardens. Fantastic orchids there. Good to use the cameras again.
San Antonio Botanical Gardens
We spent this weekend in San Antonio for John’s graduation, and our morning entertainment was to head to the Botanical Gardens for a quick walkaround. It was the first time I’d had the macro lens out in quite a while (not counting our trip to the bluebonnets, not posted), and I was perhaps a bit rusty. All in all I was surprisingly pleased with the general facility – while it doesn’t have the size of the Dallas Arboretum, it’s close to being in the same league in terms of landscaping and plant variety. There are, of course, the general staples (pansies, lilies), but also some more unique things (a desert section, and some nice orchids). Definitely worth dropping by if you get a chance.
Full gallery available here.
A breaking D90… that still (sort of) takes pictures
So for those of you who haven’t heard, my D90 is having issues. Specifically, it seems to be deleting my pictures on the camera with a mind of its own. Over the past week or so, I’ve shot a variety of pictures trying to determine if my camera has an issue, and today I sent it off to Nikon for repairs. Sigh. I’ll just have to shoot the D300 for a while, which really isn’t the worst thing one could say.
Anyway, a few shots from the random clickfest.
Colorado
For those of you who don’t know, I spent almost two weeks in Colorado recently, and am just now getting around to putting pictures up. A group of five of us spent 9 wonderful days on the trail, treking through some of the most remote and beautiful parts of Colorado in the Weminuche Wilderness. For those interested in the details of our route, just ask and I can break it down step by step, but many parts of it will be clear from the comments on the full gallery of pictures.
For those interested, I took the D90 with a Tamron 17-50 2.8, and Seth graciously loaned me his Nikon 55-200 VR. In addition I took my gorillapod and three batteries – the whole rig contributing about 4 pounds to my pack. In retrospect, I would probably swap out the 17-50 for a lighter 18-55, even though the quality likely wouldn’t be as good – the weight would be hard to argue with, though. Additionally, I did suffer a near-catastrophic failure of my memory card, though with some good recovery software I was able to get a few of the images off. Not quite sure about the reason for the failure yet.
A full gallery, along with subtitles, is available here.
View from our campsite on the first night.
A Rocky Mountain Columbine
The first part of our trip was hiking up the Vallecito Creek, shown here.
Lots of lily-like flowers along the trail.
The Guardian, as seen from our third camp.
One of many mountain waterfalls.
Leviathan Lake, pretty much the most beautiful place ever, even in this HDR-ish shot.
A view of the lake in the morning, with the water still.
Needed a new Facebook profile picture.
We were joined by two goats – in this case Buddy.
Yes, had to do a long exposure even in the mountains. Why else would I take 3 batteries?
Looking back to the west over the whole of the lake in the morning.
Jagged Mountain. Note that Buddy (and Mable) decided to follow us over the pass.
This is Floyd, our friendly neighborhood marmot.
Brent, fishing on the Animas.